AACT NewPlayFest
Discover the future of theatre with AACT’s NewPlayFest – where emerging voices take center stage, and winning plays are brought to life by theatres across the nation. Join us in celebrating new works that captivate audiences and inspire future productions
AACT NEWPLAYFEST: UNMATCHED PERFORMANCE
Cultivating new plays for audiences to enjoy
Explore NewPlayFest
Explore AACT NewPlayFest through its current and recent festival cycles. Learn about winning playwrights, producing theatres, world premiere productions, and the national program that helps bring outstanding new plays to community theatre stages across the country.
Meet the winning playwrights, discover the selected plays, and explore the world premiere productions of NewPlayFest 2026.
Meet the selected Producing Theatres and follow the journey toward six new world premiere productions.
Why NewPlayFest?
AACT NewPlayFest is a national program that champions bold new scripts written for community theatres. Every two-year cycle brings together playwrights, reviewers, dramaturgs, and producing theatres to develop outstanding new work and introduce audiences to fresh stories through world premiere productions.
Community theatres are always searching for compelling new plays, while playwrights are looking for opportunities to see their work come to life on stage. NewPlayFest bridges that gap by connecting talented playwrights with theatres committed to developing and producing new work.
Scripts move through a blind, multi-tiered review process before being matched with Producing Theatres from across the country. Each winning play receives a fully realized world premiere production, collaboration with a dramaturg, publication through Dramatic Publishing, and national promotion through AACT.
Whether you're a playwright, producing theatre, reviewer, volunteer, or audience member, NewPlayFest celebrates creativity, collaboration, and the future of community theatre by helping new voices reach the stage.
BENEFITS FOR PLAYWRIGHTS, THEATRES, AND AUDIENCES
The American Association of Community Theatre’s prestigious NewPlayFest is mutually beneficial for the artistic growth of playwrights as well as community theatres and their audiences. Through a detailed, thoughtful selection process, actors and directors are afforded a unique opportunity to partner with a writer and dramaturg to engage in a rehearsal process that helps to polish and refine new dramatic literature. Through the performance of a NewPlayFest play, audiences are rewarded with new and intriguing stories presented as world premieres that celebrate the outstanding talent of American community theatres and playwrights.
FROM PREMIERE TO PUBLICATION
Following their premieres, all winning plays will be published and licensed through Dramatic Publishing, expanding their reach to theatres across the country. AACT selects member theatres to produce the winning plays. Producing Theatres are responsible for providing a fully realized, world premiere production, and for bringing in the playwright for workshopping the script and a performance.
AACT works with the Producing Theatres to compile a NewPlayFest calendar and a promotional plan, including social media, to encourage attendance at the productions and consideration of the winning plays for production by other theatres. Producing Theatres are responsible for providing a fully realized, world premiere production between June 1, 2027 and December 31, 2028, and bringing in the playwright for workshopping the script and a performance.
SELECTING THE WINNERS
Submitted scripts are read and ranked by a national panel of reviewers through a three-tiered reviewing process. Finalist scripts are reviewed by the Producing Theatres, which select the winning plays to be brought to life on stage.
THE PRODUCTIONS
AACT partners with Producing Theatres to craft a festival calendar and create a comprehensive promotional plan—including social media outreach—to boost attendance and encourage other theatres to consider these new works for their own seasons. Each production helps shape the future of the play, providing invaluable feedback for the playwright on what works, what doesn’t, and potential areas for revision.
PLAY ANTHOLOGIES
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The winning plays are published in an anthology by Dramatic Publishing Company, which also highlights the Producing Community Theatre and the cast for the production.
Click here for the current list of anthologies.
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THE JACK K. AYRE AND FRANK AYRE LEE THEATRE FOUNDATION
AACT NewPlayFest is made possible in part by a grant from the Jack K. Ayre and Frank Ayre Lee Theatre Foundation. Jack K. Ayre celebrated his 90th birthday before passing away in December 2011. At his birthday party, he sang with a barbershop quartet – one of his favorite activities – and celebrated with his cousin and lifelong friend, Frank Ayre Lee. Though as adults they lived on opposite sides of the country, the cousins kept in touch through letters that displayed a love for the written word and an irreverent sense of humor. Jack had participated in theatre productions at Drew University in New Jersey and at a community theatre in Connecticut in his younger years, and continued that interest when he moved to California. Mr. Lee was also an avid aficionado of theatre, and had dabbled in playwriting, adapting Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book for a children’s theatre production, and penning McSteg, a tongue-in-cheek discourse, ribbing his cousin Jack and based on a scene in Shakespeare’s MacBeth. The Jack K. Ayre and Frank Ayre Lee Theatre Foundation was created by the children of Frank Ayre Lee as a tribute to their father, who passed away in August 2012, and a legacy for the creative endeavors of Jack, who was an advertising executive and public relations director. The family is pleased to honor both men through a lasting legacy promoting new works for theatre through AACT NewPlayFest. |
Jack K. Ayre
Frank Ayre Lee |
